I watched Planet of the Vampires, a 1965 Mario Bava film. It's nowhere near as good as Black Sunday or Black Sabbath (which is really, really good, and yes, is the source of the band's name), but it is interesting. It basically looks a like a really pretty Star Trek episode (an extremely tiny budget) with some pretty clever no-budget practical special effects. The thing that's interesting is how much Alien and, to a lesser extent, the Thing are ripped off from it, both story-wise and, with respect to Alien, the visuals. The visual parallels with Alien are so striking that it would be accurate to describe it as the planet from Alien done in TOS style (plus some Italian color love). Also even more weirdly, maybe it's the basis for Thetans in Scientology?

Black Sunday, based on the Thomas Harris novel? Is the movie adaptation any good?

It's pretty entertaining. Bruce Dern gives a very manic performance.

Thanks. I liked the novel, which gives me pause about the movie, because I never like the movie adaptation of a book I've read. They just can't measure up. My boss at the video rental store where I used to work was always adamant that I would enjoy it, although I hadn't read the novel yet at that time.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -E Benn

I didn't much like it. And whatever it was supposed to be a metaphor of was opaque. Kind of a mess.

If the metaphor was supposed to be white supremacists -- with Randy and the "good" crack-smoking witches being akin to Trump's "very fine people" who marched with Nazis but are totally good people who shouldn't be associated with those bad Nazis who actually kill people and stuff, and get very butthurt at folks' suggestions "Maybe you should stop putting on your funny costumes and meeting with your friends while other people wearing your same costume are doing genuinely horrible things," -- well, it's not a perfect metaphor/parody/satire, but it mostly works -- at least enough for me to think that was the intent the first time I watched it with no preconceptions.

But I actually watched the episode a second time, after reading the reviews comparing it to Weinstein, and I still don't see how THAT metaphor is supposed to work. Okay, Weinstein is the "bad witch" who does bad-witchy things like kidnap children and burn people's houses -- so who are the "good witches" supposed to represent, the ones who dress up as witches but avoid doing evil stuff? It can't simply be "the good witches are the HOllywood types who DON'T sexually harass people, because THAT'S not the type of thing that involves wearing funny costumes, nor the type of thing you really ought to quit doing for awhile now that Weinstein the Bad Guy is in the news .... I just don't see how the witches episode was supposed to be about Weinstein, and none of the (handful of) reviews I've read explained it-- they just said "Oh, yeah, it's totally Weinstein" (though one of them did include a throwaway line about how you might think its white supremacists they're parodying).

"Myself, despite what they say about libertarians, I think we're actually allowed to pursue options beyond futility or sucking the dicks of the powerful." -- Eric the .5b

I'm watching Train to Busan, a Korean zombie movie, and it's pretty good, but I am frustrated that the characters' don't realize that the solution to to the zombies is basically a logic game that involves kiting, which South Koreans are the best in the world at.

Well dammit finally looking at going to Blade Runner 2049 and it looks like fucking JIGSAW of all movies has pushed it off the IMAX screens. Fucking Jigsaw. Like that needs IMAX more than Blade Runner. Grrrrr.

"Never forget: a war on undocumented immigrants by necessity is a war on all of our freedoms of association and movement."

If the movie is faithful to the book (at least the "childhood" parts; I gather they're saving the "adult" half of the story for a sequel), it pretty much HAS to have "too many" child actors: seven members of the "Losers Club," Henry Bowers and the three or four members of his bully-clique, and of course all the Derry kids Pennywise kills.

"Myself, despite what they say about libertarians, I think we're actually allowed to pursue options beyond futility or sucking the dicks of the powerful." -- Eric the .5b

If the movie is faithful to the book (at least the "childhood" parts; I gather they're saving the "adult" half of the story for a sequel), it pretty much HAS to have "too many" child actors: seven members of the "Losers Club," Henry Bowers and the three or four members of his bully-clique, and of course all the Derry kids Pennywise kills.

There's no reason to stay true to the book. If you want to be true to the book, read the book. I'm only talking about the losers club, since they are the ones that get lost.